I made it.  The swivel base came from McMaster Carr

I am told that aluminum bronze wears better than silicon bronze.  Aluminum bronze was an option for this job.  If possible, I wanted to do it with regular mig wire, because this machine is going to be used pretty hard.  Sometimes it runs a hammer.  I think that was part of why it was loose.  7000 hours of a hydraulic hammer will loosen things up.  The customer has 3 excavators.  This one is the oldest.  He likes it better than the new ones, so he wanted to restore it to a new condition. 

I really like carbide compared to high speed steel.  I am also very supersized in the difference between cheap carbide and good carbide.  Feb in Canada sounds like a great time to be line boring:)

I was using pulse mig.  Probably around 140 amps

I have used plug welds.  I like making them with the mag drill so there is no need to clean the hole. Torch works to.   I could have used some on this, but I decided that it probably didn't need it.

The excavator is a pretty nice Kubota.  It just came into my shop a couple of days ago with a broken final drive.  I am going t get that fixed up and it will be ready to go

More line boring videos to come.

This would have been really easy to mess up.  I have mess up a lot of stuff by getting it too hot.

Some of the scale was really light so I burned through it.  Most of it was normal mill scale with some rust, so I cleaned those up.

Lloyd ScharfI have burned up a couple of electric motors after not many hours on them.  I got a re manufactured transmission for my truck.  It was junk out of the box.  The company gave me another one, but that didn't help with down time or the labor with having to swap the transmission again.  A friend of mine rebuilt a PACCAR engine for a customer with all OEM PACCAR parts.  After a few hundred miles the aircompressor locked up and blew the gear train apart.  PACCAR told him it was his problem.  I went though 4 coolant over flow tanks for my truck until I found one that wouldn't leak.  I had a brand new radiator for that truck as well with bad threads in it .  That thread sealant stuff saved me on that.  Pipe dope and Teflon tape wouldn't seal it.  So yes,  an excuse for total junk at premium prices.